After fifty years of theatregoing, you’d have thought there were few canonical classics I haven’t seen. But some have slipped through the net. And one of these is Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov. I know, it’s inexcusable. But thanks to Fennec Fox’s highly original production at Keble’s O’Reilly Theatre, another one is off the list.
And Uncle Vanya is so Chekhov. It’s like a dry run for Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard. All the tropes are there: a once-wealthy Russian family forced to sell off its woodland – check; a group of women desperate (but psychologically unable) to escape the confines of their rural idyll – check; visiting, idealistic men whose ideals will take them nowhere – check; characters obsessed with their own petty problems and unable to sympathise with others – check ov! In fact, if it weren’t actually by Chekhov, Uncle Vanya could almost pass as a parody of the master. It even has a Chekhov’s Gun (of which more later).
Joshua Robey’s production is a daring balancing act between conventional style and innovative ideas. The individual performances are clear, traditional, pure Chekhov. Lucía Mayorga as Sonya, the (self-described) ‘plain’ daughter, evinces the agony that lurks beneath the teaspoons at five o’clock, while Laura Boyd as Elena is a tightly-wound funeral drum of repressed desires. Rufus Shutter (continuing his apparently endless career as Oxford’s ne’er-do-well stage heartthrob) delivers the superficial philosophical yearnings of country doctor Michael in blissful ignorance of the passions he is stirring up. And Ezana Betru as John (Vanya in the original text) is funny, stymied and emasculated, a loose cannon in more ways than one. The acting is outstanding across the board: measured, responsive and imbued with passion. Robey has a talent for bringing out the best in his casts, and that skill is on full display here.
This traditional rendition, however, has been located in a setting, a time and a psychological landscape which is anything but conventional. For a start, William Want’s set is pure white, with a symbolic spinney of saplings suspended above the stage. Gone is the realistic country house, the garden furniture and – most significantly – the gun above the mantelpiece. (The absence of the rifle in the early scenes, strictly speaking, means that when it finally appears in the third act, it’s not a Chekhov’s Gun at all, as it hasn’t been teased in advance. But there are other things that fulfil that function.) It feels, and looks, as if our group of lost souls is on a futuristic spaceship heading for oblivion. Secondly, the language and music jar from time to time with the 1897 milieu: characters shout ‘Fuck’ at each other, and the impoverished neighbour Cartwright (a mellifluous Oli Spooner) plays anachronistic songs such as the Beatles’ 'Blackbird' on a pointedly amplified guitar – at one point even sharing a karaoke-style duet with Elena. All the original Russian names have been anglicised too.
None of this is because the production wants to relocate the action to the modern day, or to the UK. It’s more that it wants to dislocate it from its original setting, and cast it adrift in some sort of nameless, eternal limbo. This is a Russia of the mind, nor are we out of it.
It’s a fascinating idea, and to be fair it left some audience members in limbo too, wondering why, who and what was going on. There was much discussion and head-scratching at the interval. ‘Why are they singing modern songs?’ and ‘Which one is Vanya?’ were two questions I heard. But the one everyone was asking was, ‘Who’s the girl at the back who doesn’t say anything?’
The girl at the back who doesn’t say anything is Elektra Voulgari Cleare, and the reason she doesn’t say anything is because she’s not in Chekhov’s script. However it is pretty clear who she is supposed to be in Robey’s vision of the play: she is the deceased first wife of the aging Professor, and mother of his daughter Sonya. (There’s even a pile of earth representing her grave.) She owned the land when she was alive, and she remains as a ghostly presence, observing, pitying, not judging her surviving relatives. Cleare is on stage throughout, but she only interacts with another character right at the end. Instead of a Chekhov’s Gun, she’s a Chekhov’s Mum.
But why has Robey introduced this apparition? Does it add anything to the play, or is it a mere directorial conceit? My overwhelming feeling was that the antiseptic setting, the disorientating language, the songs from a different era, the presence of a dead relative, the trapped characters, and the fact that the one who gets shot with the gun neither dies nor is even wounded, all conspire to generate the idea that these people are in Purgatory. They are all dead or dying, and they just haven’t realised it yet. Rather than a Russian country estate, they are stuck in the datcha at the end of the universe, doomed to replay their frustrations for all eternity. It’s a wonderfully expressionistic response to Chekhov’s abiding theme: that Russia is at the end of an era, the ruling classes are on the verge of destruction, and their world is about to vanish forever.
The path between experimental inspiration and conventional interpretation is a narrow and treacherous one. And a production must decide how explicable it wants to be. Undoubtedly at last night’s performance a lot of audience members (clever Oxford students the lot of them) went away wondering what it all meant. But I think this Uncle Vanya is a slow burn. It rests in your memory, and sinks into your skull like lubricating oil. This is a morning-after review. I’ve slept on it. And I think Chekhov has found a new champion.
And as for seeing all the classics, please could someone now do Henry VIII?